In an initial seven-year agreement, the telecoms company BT will use Semafone software in its own contact centre and voice platforms to give customers a secure means of accepting card payments by telephone. The product will be hosted by BT, thereby the firms say reducing the Payment Card Industry (PCI) controls at the customers’ premises.
This will form part of BT Secure Contact, allowing contact centre agents to have a voice conversation with their customers while the payment is taken securely, complying with PCI regulations. Customers key in card details into their telephone handsets and these are then transmitted to the bank. The tones of the keypad are masked, so that the agent cannot identifying the numbers by their sound.
BT’s contact centre solutions are available to customers in the UK and around the world. BT Cloud Contact platform supports over 52,000 customers and manages over 10 billion minutes of calls a year.
Paul Farmiloe, Managing Director, BT Payment Solutions, said “Secure payments and transaction processing are top of mind among global executives and their IT departments. They make business sense and are also mandated by the regulatory framework. We are particularly proud of the fact that our proposition, incorporating this new BT managed service, based on the solution from Semafone, does not require investment in hardware for our customers; the service is fully integrated into BT’s platform and is available from the cloud anywhere in the world. We believe this new service adds great value to BT’s voice and call centre solutions.”
Tim Critchley, CEO of Semafone, said: “There are an estimated 700,000 agent positions in the UK and 2.8million globally. BT is a service provider with the reach to make a vast difference to the security of millions of business transactions. We are already aware of several large companies who are keen to sign up to the service and we look forward to seeing the service grow.”
About Semafone
Semafone provides software to contact centres so they can take secure credit and debit card payments over the phone. Card data goes directly from the customer’s telephone keypad to the bank. This takes the contact centre out of scope of PCI DSS regulations, removing the threat of fraud and its associated reputational damage, the company says.
Semafone has achieved the security and payment accreditations ISO 27001:2013, PA DSS certification for its payment solution, PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider and is a Visa level 1 merchant agent.
The company was founded in 2009 and serves financial services, media, retail, utilities, travel and tourism and the public sector. Customers include Virgin Holidays, Aviva Canada, TalkTalk, Nemo Personal Finance, Sky and Yorkshire Water. Visit www.semafone.com.
